Is it wrong to keep the remains of a cremated baby?

[chad1973]

My wife and I have found out this week that our unborn child has passed away. Our baby was only 15 weeks old at the time of death and my wife will have to have a procedure later in the week to induce the delivery of the baby’s body. In addition to dealing with the emotional trauma of losing our child, we also have to make arrangements regarding the baby’s remains and find ourselves faced with the difficult choice between burial and cremation.

Under normal circumstances, we would simply have our child buried, however, we have only lived in our area for a few years, we do not have any family in our area, we will move at some point in the future a great distance from this area, and neither of us would be buried locally when we depart this world. My question is, would we be offending God if we chose to keep the baby’s cremated remains in our home until such time as we put down more permanent roots or the remains could be buried with one us? Thank you for your assistance.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I am so sorry for your loss, and my prayers are with you and your wife during this difficult time. May God comfort, heal, and strengthen you.

In answer to your question, while it is true that there may occasionally be extraordinary objective reason to temporarily hold on to the cremains of another person (e.g., financial constraints), the reasons you cite seem to concern your own attachment to your child’s cremains and not any objective reason why the cremains cannot be properly committed to the earth or water at this time. In other words, it appears that you want to keep your child’s cremains in your possession. This is entirely understandable, but is inappropriate nonetheless.

I’m certain that you and your wife know that your child is a human person with his own inalienable human dignity. What you may not realize is that this means that you should not treat your child in any way that implies that he is your possession. Keeping cremains in your home, either temporarily or permanently, suggests that he is indeed a possession, just as surely as are the clock and the books you may also keep on a shelf in your home.

I can only recommend that you do the best you can to properly handle your child’s cremains right away. If you can travel to the area where you plan to move at some point, you could bury your child there now. If you cannot afford a burial plot right now, you can commit to a sea or lake the urn with the cremains contained within it. (Cremains should not be scattered, but they can be “buried” in a body of water if contained in a suitable container.) Or, if you cannot travel to bury your child right now, then bury him locally, knowing that you will one day be reunited with him in the next life, and by that point it won’t matter where your bodies are buried.

It might help to meditate on the resurrected Christ’s meeting with Mary Magdalene. Many have puzzled over why he told her not to touch him for he had not yet ascended to his Father (John 20:15-17). I like to think that he was telling her that she should not cling to him, he’d be around for a while before the Ascension. But the larger spiritual point we can take from this is that there is no need to cling to a loved one’s body as a source of comfort, but instead we should rejoice in their anticipated reunion with their Father in heaven and our hope to join with them there someday.